Steve: “Looking to cheer himself up, he was plucking his guitar in the ‘straight eight’ Motown style that we’d heard so much on this tour, from ‘Baby Love’ and ‘Where did our love go’ and beyond. As he peered out the window, feeling like he’d rather be anywhere in the world on this rainy day, the line came out: ‘What a day for a daydream’. Maybe twenty minutes later he’d finished the song”.

“I have to admit I didn’t particularly love ‘Daydream’ at the time. I was OK with it as an album track, but I didn’t think it had commercial potential”, moest hij achteraf toegeven. In 1966 bereikte ‘Daydream’ echter de op een na hoogste positie in de Amerikaanse Hot 100 van Billboard.

Op 13 december 1965 bevonden de leden van de Lovin’ Spoonful zich weer in de Bell Sound-studio (New York). Ze kregen vier dagen de tijd om een album op te nemen. Want op 17 december werden de jongens weer elders (Cleveland) verwacht. “After four days in the studio, we had enough for an album and it was ‘Hello, Cleveland’ for a couple of days, before we returned home for a few weeks of R&R during the Christmas season of 1965”.

De ouders van Steve waren natuurlijk trots op wat hun zoon bereikt had. Maar helemaal accepteren wat hij deed, zat er niet in. Rock-muziek was nog niet algemeen geaccepteerd als een vorm van cultuur. “My dad was still in line with most of his generation when it came to rock ’n’ roll. Even though it had been 10 years since Elvis burst on the scene, guys like my dad still thought this was all just a fad that would soon be gone”.

Steve had met de optredens van de groep wel wat geld verdiend en daarvan een en ander opzij gelegd. In de paar dagen dat hij weer even op Long Island vertoefde, besloot hij er een eigen woning te kopen. Het was zeker geen droomvilla. “It was located at in the meat packing district at the heart of the West Village. It was an actual carriage house that had been converted to a one-bedroom apartment with the bedroom - bath upstairs and the kitchen – living area downstairs”.

Tijdens hun verblijf trokken de artiesten met elkaar op. Boone kon het goed vinden met David Crosby van de Byrds, die in die tijd (voor de tweede keer) een nummer één-hit hadden met hun bewerking van de Pete Seeger-song ‘Turn Turn Turn’. Steve: “I began chatting with David Crosby He shared my interest in sailing and sports cars, and as we talked, he said, ‘Let’s go for a ride in my new Porsche, I just got it. I’ll get you back onstage just in time for the next set’.

Sounded OK to me.

Once we were in David’s car, he broke out some potent hash-laced pot, which we smoked as we raced around L.A. in his fine new vehicle. True to his word, David had me back on time, but I was so high on the smoke that I could barely see my feet”.

“I had not driven the Mustang two blocks when out of nowhere came the red lights of a police car behind us.

Panic! Though Zal and I were both stoned and probably drunk, I was completely surprised, because we weren’t speeding nor from my perspective driving unusually.

As I slowed down to stop, Zally, who was carrying the pot, pulled it out of his jacket and stuffed it under his seat.

We pulled to a stop and the officer - I only saw one at first - came up to the driver’s window with a flashlight and asked for the usual ID and registration, and then almost immediately asked if he could search the car.

By now I was totally shaken up, and then I noticed another officer standing behind the car on Zally’s side, also with a flashlight.

Before I could even say yes or no to the search, they asked us to step out of the car and went right to the passenger seat and pulled out the bag of pot”.

Steve en Zal kwamen vast te zitten. “We were put in a holding cell with about 10 other guys, mostly drunks and petty criminals. Long hair still being pretty new, even among criminals, we did not look like the rest of our fellow detainees.

Het leven van een rockster had z’n consequenties, bleek regelmatig. “I was considered a star”, met die woorden omschreef Steve Boone een andere ervaring op de westkust. “One of the waitresses of the Trip approached me. I’d noticed her from the stage early on, as she was a great-looking gal with dramatic make up and a nice body. I spent the night with her that night”.

Jeannie was niet alleen een groupie. Ze maakte kleding voor rock-artiesten. “I got her to make me a custom turtleneck leather motorcycle shirt, which was the coolest piece of clothing I had ever had”.

Mede dankzij haar relatie met de bassist van de populaire popgroep maakte het meisje carrière. “Within a year she had rock star clients from the U.S. and England, and by 1968 she had her own boutique in L.A.”

Jeannie werd niet ouder dan 27 jaar. Ze verongelukte in Engeland. “There was a great outpouring of grief in the rock community, and Cream bass player Jack Bruce named his first solo album ‘Songs for a Tailor’ as a tribute to Jeannie”.

Maar de Lovin’ Spoonful werd ook in Europa verwacht. Steve: “We were a little nervous about England. The American groups who sprang up as would-be challengers to The Beatles and the rest of the British Invasion had been basically ignored in Britain.

Our friends The Byrds had been treated roughly by the press and audiences when they’d gone to England in the summer of 1965, so we knew, chart hit or not, it was going to take some work for us tobe fully accepted there”.

Er werd dan ook niets aan het toeval overgelaten. “Our entourage for the trip consisted of [manager] Bob Cavallo, who went ahead of us to work out some logistics; [producer] Erik Jacobsen; our PR guy, Dan Moriarty; road manager Rich Chiaro and photographer Don Paulsen. We were staying at the May Fair Hotel in Piccadilly, which is where a lot of the American acts, including Dylan, had stayed on their journeys there.

Our management had set up appearances throughout the next week on local TV staples Top of the Pops, Ready Steady Go! and Thank Your Lucky Stars, in addition to an appearance on BBC Radio”. In Ready Steady Go! trad de groep op met Dusty Springfield, Searchers en Manfred Mann.

De Amerikanen gaven op 19 april 1966 bovendien een concert voor genodigden in de Marquee. Vanaf het toneel herkende de bassist tal van beroemdheden in het publiek: John Lennon, George Harrison, Brian Jones, Steve Winwood, Spencer Davis en Eric Clapton. “To say I was extremely nervous for this show would be an understatement”.

Bij een ander optreden kwam Brian Jones opnieuw opdagen. “He invited us to a wild party at his house afterward”.

Lovin’ Spoonful in Londen

De Lovin’ Spoonful vloog tevens naar Stockholm. “We played Sweden’s version of Ready Steady Go! on a show that also included a hit Swedish act called The Hep Stars. The group’s piano player was a guy named Benny Andersson, who revealed himself to be a big Spoonful fan and later found fame and fortune as a member of ABBA”.

In zijn autobiografie legde Robert-Jan Stips (Supersister, Nits) vast dat hij op jeugdige leeftijd geld kreeg om zijn eerste album te kopen. “The great day arrived: with 25 guilders in his pocket he went off to the record shop to buy his first LP. It took him more than two hours in a backroom of the store to decide which LP he would buy: ‘Pet Sounds’ by the Beach Boys, Loving Spoonful’s ‘Daydream’ or the ‘Rhapsody in Blue-American in Paris’ - Gershwin/Bernstein. After a long long while he went for the Loving Spoonful!”

Iedereen realiseerde zich dat ‘Summer in the city’ iets bijzonders was. “The song was really shaping up as something special, and everyone recognized it. Subsequently the idea of putting ‘city’ noises - traffic, maybe a construction crew - over my piano part was floated. This was a fairly unusual component for a pop song.

We brought in this little old radio soundman who sat crossed-leg on the floor with a portable reel-to-reel and boxes and tapes of car horns and pneumatic drills, and overdubbed some city noises that really complemented my faux-Gershwin part.

Other contributions included the vocal arrangements and harmonies, which 14-year-old Mark Sebastian had some say in, and a guitar part from Zally”.

Steve sprak zich met name lovend uit over de geluidstechnicus. “The unsung hero in this whole two-minute, 45-second opera had to be Roy Halee. Roy was a studio engineer at Columbia who was working with us for the first time and we’d quickly grown to admire, as he had a number of innovative ideas.

When it came time to do the drum overdubs, Roy devised the notion of putting a mic at the top of the eighth floor stairwell, the Voice of the Theatre loud speaker at the bottom, then ‘wowing’ the volume to give the sound extra punch.

The reason the drums sound so powerful on that song is because of Roy Halee, whom we would later unsuccessfully try to steal as our exclusive engineer”.

In het blad Hitparader werden meer details gegeven over de ingewikkelde opname van ‘Summer in the city’, met Donovan als toehoorder. “Steve Boone did the arranging. He added another instrumental figure, and, together with the other guys, selected the instruments to be played.

The instrumental background was recorded in four steps. The first take had drums, organ, electric piano and rhythm guitar. Next a bass and autoharp were dubbed on the soundtrack and the third time around a guitar. The final overdub added more percussion, including a big wastebasket that Zal kept hitting with a drumstick. Everyone is dying to hear the vocal - even just once - but John is too tired. He sings it the following night”.

Steve Boone: “We were proud of the song, and knew it would be one of the foundational elements of the next album, which Kama Sutra and our management began demanding almost as soon as Daydream had cracked the Top 10, maybe even before”.

Sebastian en zijn vriendin beheersten de sfeer binnen de Spoonful. “John and Lorey were becoming annoying as shit. No one besides John liked Lorey. It was not long before John and Lorey were spending every waking (and sleeping) minute together, except when we were on tour. He called her constantly from the road”.

Zijn houding riep weerstand op. Steve: “I was growing just a bit weary of playing on cloying love songs about a woman for whom I had barely concealed disdain. I was starting to wonder just a bit about John’s judgment being clouded by the relationship. When you combine that with the fact that he was necessarily taking a major leadership role in group decisions, you could see a divide beginning to grow in the band”.

Het liefdesliedje ‘Rain on the roof’ had lang niet zo’n succes als de rocker ‘Summer in the city’.

Steve: “This would not be a collaborative effort. John wrote the songs by himself before turning them over to Artie Schroeck, who wrote arrangements for an orchestral production.

When we showed up to the soundtrack sessions on that week in mid-October 1966, Zally, Joe and I were greeted by charts that told us what parts to play.

‘What the fuck is this?’ Zally whispered to me.

He was being told to play only on the two and the four, with none of his usual improvisation allowed. He felt he was being punished, and he wasn’t sure what for. It sure seemed like we were all being treated like session musicians. I just shrugged.

John had written the song while waiting one night for Lorey to come home from work. Yes, it was another Lorey song. When John showed up to do the vocal, Lorey happened to be there. John started singing directly to Lorey as he cut the track, and at some point got so wrapped up in the emotion of the lyrics that he pretty much started crying”.

In zijn memoires liet Steve Boone afdrukken: “From where we stood in the fall of 1966, it looked like John was beginning to exert total control and trying to dictate the band’s every move, which was not going over well at all, especially when we suspected Lorey was in John’s ear on a lot of these issues”.

“The new record deal sounded great. Things were not all sunshine and roses among the four of us, but maybe this vote of confidence on the part of Kama Sutra would be the shot in the arm we’d need to move forward both artistically and collaboratively. It’s nice to feel like you’re wanted, like you’re valued by the label and they believe in you enough to lock you up for the foreseeable future”.

Toen het erop aankwam bleek er een addertje onder het gras te zitten. “When we showed up to sign the contracts, we learned that value was a relative term for the four members of The Lovin’ Spoonful. Inserted into the language of the contract was wording that said something to the effect of ‘The Lovin’ Spoonful can consist of any group of persons as long as one of those persons is John Sebastian’.

The heading on that section of the contract was titled ‘key man clause’.

What it really meant was that The Lovin’ Spoonful only existed if John Sebastian was a member of the band. If I left or Zally or Joe left, we were replaceable, but if John left, the contract was null and void and the rest of us could hand in our playbooks.

The deal effectively turned us into his sidemen, putting us in a position where every decision was ultimately going to be John’s. If John decided he didn’t like a song choice or an arrangement or really anything else, he could bail and Kama Sutra wouldn’t have to pay us or allow us to make another record”.

In mei riep John Sebastian de leden van de groep bij elkaar – alleen Zal Yanowsky was niet uitgenodigd. Steve Boone: “I was called to his house for a band meeting, and when I got there it was just Joe and John, no Zally. I thought that was odd, since Zally lived right across the street, but I’d soon find out why he hadn’t been invited.

‘Zally’s behavior has gotten to a point where I cannot take it anymore’, he said”.

Steve Boone: “We didn’t really know Wissert, but in our early meetings with him he seemed like a nice enough guy and understood what we were about”.

Van de samenwerking kwam niet veel terecht, bleek toen er een nieuwe langspeelplaat opgenomen werd. “Joe Wissert simply did not have the same comfort level with us. We all found him very difficult to communicate with. He was barely present for the second half of the sessions, and by the time we got to the mixing stage of the album, he was nowhere to be found”.

De nieuwe single, ‘Money’ kwam niet hoger dan 48 in de hitlijsten. Voor John Sebastian was het de druppel die de emmer deed overlopen. “Not long after, as we halfheartedly plotted our next move, John Sebastian broke the news, just before a tour rehearsal: he was leaving the group. ‘I’ve talked it over with Bob Cavallo’, he said. ‘And this is it. After this next round of dates, I’m leaving the group. You guys can carry on if you want to, but I’m out’.